Sunday I couldn’t stay on-line to listen and pick, but the next non-personal post still has to be another quick addition to this series, so I’ll get right to it, starting with Liliumdust, which is a new band that currently just has one lyric video uploaded, for Survivor, so that will have to be my first pick and it’s what made me pay attention to them. Now that I did, however, I’ll say that their best song so far, at least in my opinion, is Dusk, and overall they’re a promising band, with a good sound and members that are sufficiently experienced to get right to it, without seeming hesitant or uncertain of their desired direction. To put it bluntly, they’re clearly the best of the three bands included in this post.
The second band is Epinikon and it doesn’t even have an entry on Metal Archives yet. But they did release two songs, In the Middle of the Night and Strangers in the Dark, so I can include them in such a post. That uncertainty when it comes to the sound is quite obvious in their case, however, so what I can say at this point is that there are good parts in those songs and the vocals are better than I’ve come to expect from such bands, and it remains to be seen which way they’ll go and how well they’ll smooth out the rougher edges… Assuming they’ll last long enough to do so, of course, inexperienced people launching a new band at this time still facing even more hurdles than they’d have faced before the start of 2020, even if the world is in a better situation than it’s been in since then.
The third band is Era of Ephemeris and, while I heard of them thanks to their recent release, Secret Garden, they’ve been around for a few years and the one earlier song that they properly posted separately is Ancestral Vision, so that will have to be my second pick. This latter song again reveals itself as an early effort, but there are good elements and, while not as much as I’d have liked, I’m noticing some improvements between the two, so they at least seem to be on the right path, more or less.
I guess it’s time for another rushed post in this series, and I’ll again go with three bands from the same country that released new material within the past year. This time around the country in question is Sweden, and that’s because I’ll start with Vengeant, which I’ve been meaning to mention since March, when I happened to listen to their first song, Angel’s Battle Cry, and can finally do so now, seeing as they released a second one as well, The Unreal. So it’s not a matter of picking two songs, but simply of linking to the only two that are currently available, but that’s not an issue in the least. They do tend to start rather too angrily, and maybe maintain a bit too much of that sort of sound throughout the songs for my liking, but I guess that’s to be expected, considering the name, and the vocals shine, the choruses are great and overall they’re definitely a band to keep eyes, or ears, on.
The second band is Purple Nail, which for some reason doesn’t have a page on Metal Archives even though it’s been around for a long time and I’d say the genre shouldn’t be an issue. Either way, they uploaded a teaser stating that a new song is coming soon, but at the moment the only one uploaded within the past year is World in Flames, so that will have to be my first pick, while for the second I’ll go back to what I guess was another “age” for them. I could have made it easy for myself by selecting the only older song that they have an actual video for, but I decided not to and ended up wondering what to pick, because there are several songs I ended up liking and that one isn’t one of them. Left this decision for the end, after writing the rest of this post, and then found that I didn’t have time to go through them again, but could eventually get back to it and settled on Inverted Dreams. Either way, both the overall sound and the vocals were good back then and are good now as well, and now they also seem to want to send a message with their music, so they definitely deserve attention.
As for the third band, I’ll go with Erain. Their single recent song is Leaving for Elysium and I initially thought that this was their only release, but I just learned that they recently “resurrected” after a long hiatus… And also that the band was another one of Jessica Lehto‘s projects, and the reason why I mention this is that I included another one, Once There Was, in the second post in this series, back in 2008. Back to Erain, they now have a new vocalist and give the impression of wanting to break away from that past, but the few songs released back in 2013 are available not just on a different YouTube channel, but also on the band’s current ReverbNation one, so I listened to them and will go with Perdition as the second pick. This new song is much more professional and shows potential, but the old ones, while likely not relevant for the band anymore, aren’t bad either.
Don’t need another non-personal post just now anymore, but do need a first post of the week, to give myself some more time to write the personal one, and another addition to this series is still the easiest solution I can come up with, especially when I do have an actual new find to start with. That’s Dim Crimson, who released their first EP at the end of 2020. I’ll just pick one song from it, however, that being Dissolution, which strikes me as much better than the others. That may well be a matter of personal preference, having to do with the somewhat different overall sound, the somewhat different genre it can fall under, but at least for me it was the clear choice and what made me pay attention to them. The second pick, on the other hand, is Lost, which is their first original release and not included on this EP, so it may be somewhat rough, but it shows where they were at the time and allows me to avoid picking two songs from the same album.
Moving on, it seems that I put off including one of the bands I had marked as having a recent release for too long and said release is now more than a year old, so if I’m to skip it and also the remaining Italian bands I had marked, I’m down to just two more marked bands. The first, Worlds Beyond, definitely deserves a place in such a post, however, the way what is now their most recent video looks being what kept making me skip over them so far. So, since they officially uploaded three songs, I’ll make it easy for myself again and just skip that one and pick the other two, Moonlight and Winterstorm. The vocals are nice, there are parts that catch my attention for other reasons as well, and overall I find myself interested in listening to the whole album at some point, at least to see whether the other songs are at the same level.
As for the last remaining band I had marked, that’s ETWAS, and things are quite different when it comes to them. Since they just have one song uploaded separately, Semblant of Mercy, I’ll let their choice be my first pick, but for the second I’ll go with On the Edge of a Reawakening, and the reason for picking it is that the structure and sound reduce the impact of the poor vocals to some extent. The vocals are definitely their weak point, however, and that’s the very good reason why I’ve been skipping over them. To be fair, at this point, unless they’ll improve this aspect significantly, they shouldn’t be in such a post, but now that I’m at the end of the list I had prepared for such quick posts, I’ll throw them here as well, as the third band, and get it over with.
This will be another quick post in this series, and it’ll start with a band I never thought I was going to include in one: Evanescence. They’re obviously not a new find, as I must have heard of them around the same time I first heard of Nightwish, and they’re better known than them as well, overall, so I doubt I need to add anything about the band here. However, on the one hand the current Evanescence isn’t exactly the one from back then, and on the other, they just released a new album. As such, the first pick, Part of Me, is from it, but then I just have to go back to the old Evanescence and the original version of My Immortal as the second.
The second band, Vrylnia, is an actual new find, and their more recent release is just a single, Absolution, which will therefore be the first pick. They do, however, have an EP as well, and from it I’ll go with Silent Memories. Their other songs can be, if I may use the term, messy, sounding much worse than I see they’re capable of sounding because of poor songwriting and even what appears to be a lack of understanding of their strong points, but they kept it simpler for this one and that allowed them to show more of what they can actually do and what caught my interest, while the new single shows that they’re starting to learn to keep it together when they aim for some more variety and complexity as well.
As for the third band, Volturian, it’s one of the Italian ones with recent releases that I was saving for another post dedicated to them, but even though I’ve been adding quite a few posts in this series again, mainly as a somewhat easy way to create slots for more personal posts, there keep being other bands that I’d rather include, that post keeps getting delayed as a result and their album was released just under a year ago, so two weeks from now they won’t qualify for it anymore. Initially meant to have one of the two songs that were released earlier, as singles, as one of the picks, but both of those have growls, so I’ll just pick two out of the other three that are officially posted, going with Haunting Symphony and In a Heartbeat. What’s odd about the latter is that it features the vocalist of Frozen Crown and she sounds a fair bit better than she usually does in her own band, so her husband, who’s behind both bands, might want to figure out how that happened and use the same method there. But, to return to Volturian, they have a pretty commercial sound and are nothing to write home about in general, and I warned you about those growls on some songs, but they also have their moments, a better vocalist making it easier for that to happen than in Frozen Crown’s case, to also return to the comparison…
This post really is just thrown here to have a non-personal first one of the week in order to free a slot for what will end up being another Sunday update, and probably an incomplete one at that, but I do have three bands to post, starting with the one that, in the previous post in this series, I said I only knew the name and country for. I’m referring to Satra, who have since then showed up on Metal Archives, and while there isn’t much more information there either, it at least led me to their Bandcamp page. So, after listening to all the four songs on their first EP, just released this month, I guess I’ll go with Cold Black Snow and My Burned Paradise as the two picks. The vocals are rather poor, or perhaps a better way to put it would be hesitant, and definitely unpolished, but that’s more noticeable on the other two songs, these two showing potential, so let’s see how they’ll develop… Though I’d be curious to at least know who they are first, since I can’t find the band members listed anywhere at the moment.
I have even more recent finds, however, and while in case of one of them I again find myself in the situation I was in when I wrote the previous post in this series, being unable to include them since they just released their first song and I therefore can’t pick two, another one does have two. That other one is Elithium, and the two songs are Square the Circle and Take His Halo. While not bad either, I’m not that keen on the sound of this second one, so I’d have been much less interested if I’d have listened to it first, but the first one’s quite nice, so let’s see which way they’ll go.
As for the third band, that’s Aegonia and they’re not such a new find for me, but they do have new material released within the past year, Of Love and Hate actually striking me as the best song out of those I listened to. Admittedly, when it comes to their older ones, while you can easily listen to their entire first album, I just went through what’s posted separately and will go with Restless Mind as the second pick. The comparison makes me say that they’re getting significantly better, perhaps more noticeably in terms of their direction, of what they mean to do, though I’d say the actual quality is improving as well.
